Rethinking our Relationship to the Land

In Fall 2024, students in WWU’s ENVS 499D: Readings in Environmental Justice are reading about regenerative agriculture. This post reflects some of the group’s learning and discussion.

By Benjamin Wilde, Steven Colson and Liam Pratt

Creative Commons License – EOS Data Analytics

At present, agriculture is used as a means of production and control. In our discussion of the introduction of Liz Carlisle’s Healing Grounds, we considered the necessity of regenerative agriculture as a means of healing both the land and communities historically oppressed by colonial and industrial agricultural practices. Together, we pondered how agriculture is not just a source of food but a critical area for justice, community, and environmental restoration. Regenerative agriculture has the potential to reshape our food systems. However, as Carlisle points out, sorting through the extensive data, methods, and voices (both of Western and indigenous science), makes determining the viability of different farming methodologies difficult. Which methods best promote soil health, output, and are workable?

It is beneficial to consider the goals behind regenerative agriculture; this meta analysis by Schreefel, Schult, Boer, Schrijver and Zanten looks into 279 studies across five databases, and singles out28 as relevant to understanding the goals of regenerative agriculture. The analysis found the majority of the articles highlighted specifically improving soil health, with 17 articles touching on increasing soil biodiversity and 15 touching on enhancing and improving soil health. 15 of the articles reference regenerating the global system as a whole. Regarding effectiveness, this meta analysis by Kangura, Ferris, Wagg and Boywer discusses the effectiveness of certain facets of regenerative farming, finding that long-term practices like planting beans helps increase soil carbon, and thus sequestrates carbon from the atmosphere and improves the bioactivity and crop productivity of the soil (2023). Long-term practices benefit soil more than shorter-term practices like no tillage, but both are beneficial for soil health and should both be used in conjunction.

Social benefits of regenerative agriculture can be anecdotally found in Saadeh’s article on North Minneapolis. A community in northern Minneapolis turned inward to rely on local Cooperative producers
and a black-owned grocery store and the result of relying on a local community was “a local food system that simultaneously co-produces both health and wealth” (Saadeh, 2017). Local prosperity and food quality improve when food resources are local, collaborative and regenerative; involving black businesses and growers promotes environmental justice by putting historically disenfranchised people in charge of some of their own food supply, decoupled from the agricultural industrial complex.

In our discussion we considered the role of animal agriculture in a shift to a more just system. Animal agriculture takes up the majority of our agricultural land, as well as the most dramatic environmental footprint. A recent meta analysis indicated animal welfare has improved in regenerative agricultural systems, but the language between many articles failed to give specifics or consensus (White, 2020). Research around regenerative animal agriculture’s environmental impact is often behind a paywall, but a broad consensus across articles was the important role animals play as soil architects. Symbiosis and the pre-existing roles of animals for the soil had some articles identified animals as indispensable to regenerative agriculture.

Liz Carlisle’s book works at decoding the questions around regenerative agriculture, and sets the stage for that well. We as a collective are eager to see what else she has to say in Healing Grounds.

Sources

Hargreaves-Méndez, M. J., & Hötzel, M. J. (2023). A systematic review on whether regenerative agriculture improves animal welfare: A qualitative analysis with a One Welfare perspective. Animal Welfare, 32, e36. https://doi.org/10.1017/awf.2023.28

Khangura, R., Ferris, D., Wagg, C., & Bowyer, J. (2023). Regenerative Agriculture—A Literature Review on the Practices and Mechanisms Used to Improve Soil Health. Sustainability, 15(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15032338

Saadeh, C. (2017). Intersections of Regenerative Agriculture and Food Justice: A Journey. The Journal of Sustainability Education. https://www.proquest.com/docview/3083853489/abstract/93EDFC7D408542EEPQ/1

Schreefel, L., Schulte, R. P. O., de Boer, I. J. M., Schrijver, A. P., & van Zanten, H. H. E. (2020). Regenerative agriculture – the soil is the base. Global Food Security, 26, 100404. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2020.100404